Vehicles that are used for transporting equipment, supplies, or other items within enclosed areas such as, for example, a pickup truck with a canopy covering the bed or a motorhome having storage compartments under the living area, can hold more items than are easily accessible. For example, if a person fills a canopy covered pickup bed with tools, the tools near the tailgate are more easily accessible than tools near the front of the bed (e.g., behind the cab of the truck). Other types of storage areas associated with other types of vehicles suffer from similar shortcomings.
One solution to the problem of accessing items in storage areas is the use of an extendable load floor. Extendable load floors typically include a base frame which may be attached to the storage area of a vehicle such as the bed of a pickup truck, for example, using fasteners. The fasteners may be extended through registering fastener openings at multiple locations in the base frame and the pickup truck bed, respectively. However, this method may require that fastener openings be drilled into the pickup truck bed at the locations which correspond to the locations of the fastener openings in the base frame, potentially breaking the paint of the vehicle and causing acceleration of rust in the vehicle.
Accordingly, a mounting assembly and method in which an extendable vehicle load floor is attached to a pickup truck bed using vehicle factory attachment points and hardware are desirable.